Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot on June 15, 2025 in Tehran, Iran.
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The CEOs of two major energy companies are monitoring the developments between Iran and Israel — but they aren’t about to make firm predictions on oil prices.
Both countries traded strikes over the weekend, after Israel targeted nuclear and military facilities in Iran on Friday, killing some of its top nuclear scientists and military commanders.
Speaking at the Energy Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, Lorenzo Simonelli, president and CEO of energy technology company Baker Hughes, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that “my experience has been, never try and predict what the price of oil is going to be, because there’s one sure thing: You’re going to be wrong.”
Simonelli said the last 96 hours “have been very fluid,” and expressed hope that there would be a de-escalation in tensions in the region.
“As we go forward, we’ll obviously monitor the situation like everybody else is. It is moving very quickly, and we’re going to anticipate the aspect of what’s next,” he added, saying that the company will take a wait-and-see approach for its projects.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital waterway between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. About 20% of the world’s oil passes through it.
It is the only sea route from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration has described it as the “world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.”
